Absolute Dependence

Jonathan Edwards points out one of the wonderful effects of true awakening on people in the church - a sense of absolute dependence.

"The drift of the Spirit of God in his legal strivings with persons, has seemed most evidently to be, to make way for, and to bring to, a conviction of their absolute dependence on his sovereign power and grace, and universal necessity of a Mediator, by leading them more and more to a sense of their exceeding wickedness and guiltiness in his sight; the pollution and insufficiency of their own righteousness, that they can in no wise help themselves, and that God would be wholly just and righteous in rejecting them, and all that they do, and in casting them off forever: though there be a vast variety as to the manner and distinctness of persons convictions of these things." (Pg. 70, 71, The Jonathan Edwards Reader, Yale Nota Bene)